The Book of Shadows (29 page)

“I don't know that I'd describe my speech as
theatrical,
dearest; unless of course you refer to the theater of war.” Apparently, the answer to Sebastiana's question was no. Nevertheless, Asmodei was allowed to resume.

First, surprisingly, he motioned for me—not Roméo—to refill his crystal, to pour him more of the vinum sabbati. This I did (albeit with an unsteady hand). He then proceeded to ridicule me when—foolishly, perhaps—I offered drink to Father Louis and Madeleine.

“Oh, how kind of you,” said he. “But they've not touched a drop in over two hundred years…” Again that rattling metallic laugh. “You
do
abstain, don't you, dear?”

I stood beside Madeleine; I felt her chill, but still the flames within the fireplace heated my body, mocking the inner flame of my embarrassment. That crystal decanter might have been made of stone, so heavy was it in my hand.

“As you see us now,” explained Father Louis, “we are not real. Not corporeal. We will at times hold to our mortal shapes, the shapes we held in life, and appear…
bodily;
but even then, when we might well pass for living beings, we've no need of sustenance, of food or drink.”

“Ah,” said I, “I see.” I sat back down. Even Roméo was smiling.

“You were kind to offer,” said Sebastiana.

“Foolish,” added Asmo, “foolish and kind.”

These, what you see before you, are but approximations of our earthly bodies. These are, more precisely,
and here Madeleine hesitated, looking to Father Louis,
these are the bodies we had at the moment of our deaths
.

“When the good father went up in flames and the suicide tore open her own throat, pried out the tongue that had—”

“Asmodei, please,” said Sebastiana, rapping her bloodstone ring on the tabletop. “Stop yourself, won't you, when you feel such speech welling up like vomit?”

Madeleine looked longingly, desperately, at me. It was unnerving, and I wonder that I did not look away.
What he says is true,
said she.
I took my life. And now I cannot escape this living death, unless you
—

“Wait! Please,” said Sebastiana. Again the rapping of the ring. “All in due time.”

Madeleine sat back. She seemed so eager, so sad and impatient.

Unable to stop myself, I asked if Madeleine could not take a more…a
different
shape? I meant, of course, a more
appealing
shape? Why suffer the blood flow for all time if—?

I haven't the strength to sustain another shape. Not for any length of time.

“It, like much else, is a question of the will,” added Sebastiana. “Strength of will.”

Father Louis explained that he and Madeleine could, on occasion, summon strength enough to take other shapes, as Madeleine had done with Sister Claire. Excepting such “trysts”—that was Asmodei's word—they were bound to their death-shapes. Further, they were bound to water, for it was from water that they drew strength enough to appear as anything at all. It was this watery state of theirs that caused rooms to chill when they came. “We are elementals,” said the priest. “As we appear to you now, we are made of water and air.”

Like ice. Like snow,
added Madeleine.

I wondered why, if Madeleine appeared in her death state, her throat ripped wide, why then didn't Father Louis appear, well…charred, burned? I asked this of Madeleine. As Father Louis, said she, had burned down to bone and ash, he could not hold the shape of his death. Rather he had to resort to a shape approximating his living self, and to do so was difficult.
His is by far the greater effort of will,
she added. She was the lucky one; for her there was hope.

I remember asking another question that night. “The blood flow,” I said. “Will it ever cease?” That incessant bleeding, how to account for it? How was it that an elemental could bleed? Or was blood an element too, like water, air, fire, and earth?

“I must insist, again, on order,” preempted Sebastiana. “These five questions only,” said she, taking up the salver, “and no more. You see, don't you, dear,” she added, apologetically, “that without structure we might sit here forever, tossing innumerable questions back and forth and—”

Interrupting Sebastiana, Madeleine answered:
The blood flow has never stopped, not once since I passed from the living. Will it ever stop? I do not know. But I have hope, great hope. And we have a plan. And you will
…

Sebastiana was unhappy, impatient; she interrupted the excited succubus in her turn, saying to me, “I see that if you are to know of these
beings
, it's I who must speak of—”

“Yes, please,” urged Asmodei. “
You
do it. So boring, all this claptrap, all this arcana and apocrypha…. I'd much rather take my turn upon our witch. I'm quite curious, you know. Tell me,” said he, leaning nearer the priest, “what was it like when you slipped your—” Sebastiana stopped the fiend with the clatter of silver on crystal. “Bah!” said he, “so
chaste
you appear, S. But I am not fooled.”

“No,” retorted the chatelaine. “Impossible to fool a fool.”

Asmodei said nothing. He sat rolling grapes between his forefinger and thumb, popping them, sucking them, spitting the seeds this way and that. All the while he stared at me. Finally, he took to spitting the seeds at me. Several landed too near my place; they glistened darkly on the marble.

Ignoring him, Sebastiana spoke of the elementals. “It seems their origins are similar to ours,” said she, “that of witches and demons. Tales of succubi and incubi go back to the Hebrews, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, Persians…nearly every faded culture has left some record of such beings. Beings born of ‘polluted semen.'”

“Whatever the hell
that
is,” added Asmodei. “
My
seed is pure as honey from the comb.” He trailed his ringless right hand down his chest to his lap, where he worked it fast and loose; he let his face fall into a mask of pleasure, and I had to turn from him.

“Some say they are beings borne of the semen of self-abusers. Or borne of ‘impure' thought—the mind's ejaculate, if you will.”

“Sebastiana,” sang out Asmodei, “I've a
splendid
idea: why don't we just let these two give us a show. Or better yet, let's set them to work again on the witchlet!”

Sebastiana went on as though Asmo had not spoken. “Some say that they are borne of women. That the succubus takes the semen and passes it to the incubus, who then plants the demon seed in the womb of a mortal woman. Others hold that the succubus draws the semen from the recently hanged, storing it in her womb until—”

“And doesn't
that
make for a pretty picture?” asked a sardonic Asmodei. “Tell us, Madeleine, have you ever wandered the gallows in search of such sex? Is it true that hanged men go hard, that they stiffen and stay that way till all their seed is spent? Do tell us!”

Sebastiana went on without comment. “Christians called them the Lilim, the Children of Lilith.”

“Do you mean,” I began, “that you don't really know—”

“We know no absolutes,” said Sebastiana—and without much effect, she went on to offer this: “But it is our belief in nothing that frees us to believe in everything, in anything.”

My mind slowed, stilled itself in the brief silence that ensued and was broken, of course, by Asmodei: “Of course, none of
that
precludes our telling sweet and atrocious tales of incubi with cocks carved of horn and covered with icy scales; or of succubi with cold lacunae, devouring mouths dripping—”

The rapping of Sebastiana's ring. “Be silent, beast!”

“Ah, but none of this is of my own devisal,” countered Asmodei.

And remember too that I
am
just such “an atrocity.” I am kin to the legend and lore
. Madeleine was indignant, mad.

“That, my dear, is your problem,” said Asmodei, dismissing the succubus with a wave of his hand; this might well have been the start of a fantastic row, but Father Louis precluded such with these words:

“Stop it now! I insist!” Father Louis spoke not to Asmodei, but Madeleine. “Why,” he asked, “
why
must you take up this anguish, this suffering for all time?” More was said, whispered from Father Louis to Madeleine. I cannot record it here, for I could not hear it clearly; but I can say of his tone that it was consoling. Madeleine's anger or anguish abated; and she, with a nod to me,
disappeared
. Vanished. As I know of no corollary in the movement of fog or steam or rain or snow, I say simply that one moment she sat across the table from me and the next she was gone.

I rose where I sat, stood staring at the leaping flames. I remained like this for some time, till the flames stilled and Roméo, his hand on mine, gestured that I should sit. Clearly, even with his mortal's sight, he'd witnessed such trickery before; he was undisturbed. Indeed, he was already busying himself with tablework: scraping plates, gathering goblets onto a tray.

“The small hours are upon us,” said Sebastiana, “and a witch needs her sleep, as do demi-demons and Breton boys.” As she'd made no reference to the elementals, I looked to where Father Louis sat…or
had
sat, for he too was gone. The active flames confirmed it.

Sebastiana bade good night to Father Louis and Madeleine, in absentia, and rang again her tiny brass bell. This, accompanied by a fast incantation, comprised a ritual of some kind. This further unsettled me, but Sebastiana drew my attention when next she spoke: “Two questions remain. Allow me.” She took up the first of the folded sheets and read it aloud:

“‘Why did you save me?'” Her reply came fast. “Two reasons, heart. One: you are a witch—a most unusual and, I think, talented witch—and so worthy of protection. Two: had we not rescued you, you would have been…you would have met an unjust end at the convent.” I thought then of Sister Claire, and my heart constricted like a fist. “And there's a third reason, too: we wish something to be done—certain of us, in particular—and only you can succeed at it.” She did not explain further, not then. She stood, peeling the blue silk from her neck; it slithered away to show one ample breast, heavy and high; she made no effort to conceal herself.

“Last question.” I alone sat enraptured. Roméo shuffled between the table and the kitchen, clearing away the china and crystal and silver. Asmodei, with bare hands, shoveled ash onto the flaming logs of the fire, smothering it. “‘How do I live?' Hmm, rather broad that one. But as it happens I have an answer.

“In the studio, upon your return, you will find two books and an assortment of papers. The black book belongs to me. Rather, I wrote it. It is my
Book of Shadows
. Plainly, simply, it is the record of my life's lessons. It is the story of my apprenticeship, my novitiate if you will. The other book, the red one, is yours. It is blank, yours to fill. It is your
Book of Shadows,
for every witch must have one—several, actually, written over a lifetime. Read mine. Copy from it all that seems of use. Take care to use it well, to
learn
from it. Trust and learn. In it is all I know.

“And now, good night all,” and she quickly, blithely, slipped from the room, having summoned Asmodei to her side with something of a low whistle, or whisper. He, as though he could not resist, came up fast behind me before answering Sebastiana's call and with his large hand he reached down and raked his steely fingers over my chest, pinching and laughing till Sebastiana stopped him with a hiss, a frightful protracted hiss. The rigidity I felt poking into my back, well, I did not know it for what it was till I wheeled around and saw the…the
flare
where Asmodei's loose linen blouse overhung, just barely, his black breeches. Long after they'd gone I sat staring at the door through which they'd parted, stunned and silent.

“Don't pay him too much mind,” said Roméo, continuing to carry things off to the kitchen. “With Sebastiana around, he is rarely much more than very,
very
rude.” I offered to help, but Roméo refused me, thankfully; my offer was somewhat disingenuous: I knew myself to be incapable of the simplest act. I was stricken. Overawed. So, I sat.

Will I die?

What am I?

Who or what were my saviors?

Why had they rescued me?

And, How will I live?

The five questions had been asked and answered; and so how was it that I
knew
nothing? The answers were already lost in the questions to which they, in their turn, had given rise.

Finally, I rose to stand before the dying fire. Staring into the smoldering ash, wondering could
I
summon the elementals, Roméo reappeared. “‘Witches and Breton boys need their sleep,'” he quoted, smiling wisely. “I'm sure they've lit the torches, but here, just in case…” and he handed me the lantern I'd carried to the dining room a lifetime earlier.

That night, returning to the studio, I did indeed find the two books Sebastiana had described. And though she'd said the books were black and red—the former hers, the latter mine—
that
is not a satisfactory description.

These books were huge, quarto-sized. The paper was thick and slightly waxy, vellum of a sort; despite their slickness, the pages took ink well. The early pages of Sebastiana's book, looked at cursorily, seemed to have been written some time back yet they were still in fine shape. Perhaps the wax had been added later, as a preservative? No—I discovered that the blank pages of
my
much newer book had a similar quality. Both books were thick as Bibles; indeed, they very much resembled overlarge Bibles, their pages gilt-edged, their spines embossed.